8 More Years

I was prepared for the worst, prepared for the despairing that comes at the end of a new round of talks about a climate treaty. And yet, there's always that wee niggle in the back of your mind that gnaws away. Maybe this time, the politicians will come to their senses. Maybe this time, the world's leaders won't put their own re-elections before the planet. Maybe this time, the predictions of climatic chaos will actually spur folk into action.

Well, maybe next time.

There was an agreement of sorts signed, but it's far from what anybody wanted - even those that wanted nothing. It's an agreement to disagree, an agreement to keep talking and disagreeing in the hope that some time in the not too distant future, when this generation of politicians are living off their fat pensions and their lecture circuit fees, someone else can face an electorate and say "this is going to cost us so much more than if we had implemented a new treaty way back in 2012, 2011, 2010."

It's an agreement to not legally bind a legally forceful non-agreement. An agreement to produce something, anything, in 2015 that can be implemented in 2020, and that way we can have 8 more years of pollution. 8 more years of rising CO2 levels. 8 more years of despairing.

8 more years of hoping that someone, somewhere, is going to grab the world by the hair and repeatedly bash it's face off a desk until it realises how stupid it is being.

8 more years of being stupid.